Gender, Genre and Narrative Pleasure - Couverture rigide

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0044450087 ISBN 13 : 9780044450085

Editeur : Routledge, 1989

Synopsis

Regarded as an important part of cultural analysis, popular fiction is the subject of this series which is intended to provide a context for the critical study of popular fiction, drawing on interdisciplinary inquiry and addressing key questions of class, gender, race, nation and regionalism. Among the questions addressed are how do the institutions and processes involved in the production of popular fictions shape the ways in which texts and genres, meanings and ideological values are distributed and circulated? How does British popular culture interact with other cultures, especially American? How do popular fictions address their readership in terms of class, race, gender, age, regionalism and national identity? Under what material conditions does reading as a social practice take place? and what do readers draw upon in order to make sense of a popular narrative? This is collection of essays which focus on sexual politics and gender as central to understanding popular narrative. Essays on the western, melodrama, crime fiction, the political thriller and horror and science fiction are included.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

Recent years have witnessed important new initiatives in the study of popular fictional modes of writing. At one time the field could have been described with reasonable accuracy by two traditions: one that analyzed the production and distribution of popular fiction as commodities; and one whose proponents regarded popular fiction as the negative which offered definition to the exposure of the positive - the ‘great’ canonic literary tradition. Generally, then, popular fictions were to be ‘evaluated’ according to the institutionalized norms which had been established as common sense practice around literary studies.

The decade of the 1970s, however ushered in a bewildering range of theoretical debates - a crucial gain was establishment of interdisciplinary courses in communication, cultural and media studies, providing a network of contexts within which serious analysis could evolve and progress. Responding to a fundamental challenge from feminism, a primary objective of this book is to propose that all narrative and its reading are intrinsically inflected by sexual politics.

Various approaches represented here demonstrate problems of confronting the gendered pleasures of reading. Questions about self, sexuality and identity within specific historical formations are raised. The objective is to frame, describe and unearth the notion of ‘men as readers’ as a project rather than as the usual, unquestioned normative procedure.

Drawing eclectically upon Marxist, psychoanalytic and discourse theory, the essays set out readings of popular texts and genres – the Western, the sentimental novel, detective and crime fiction, political thrillers and horror and science fiction – in the interest of provoking other readers to see the critical study of popular fiction as unthinkable without gender as a central concern.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Date d'édition: 1989
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0044450087
• ISBN 13: 9780044450085
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 176
• Éditeur: Longhurst Derek
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible